Sigiriya, Rock of ages ago.

Day 2. (17/02) Dambulla & Sigiriya

The following is from my experience of today. I have deliberately not tried to recount the history of the place. If you are interested, Google it.

The day started around 05:00 with repeated visits, on my part, to the smallest room in the house, quickly followed by ingestion of a couple of loperamide capsules, which did the trick, you will no doubt be glad to know, or perhaps this is all too much information. Is however serves to set the scene.

Picked up at 07:00 hrs and driven around the back roads for an hour, arriving at Sigiriya before the massed bands of eastern tourists. A quick dash round the supporting museum to get a feel for the history of the place, then off to the rock. Goodness gracious me, what a rock! 200 mtrs high, with imposing lumps and overhangs, and riddled with caves, one of which contains the originals of the frescoes seen in the museum. It was not permitted to photograph either sets of frescoes so suffice it to say that the ladies of the ancients were beautifully endowed.

The frescoes cave was reached by a series of stone & brick stairways, the goings of which were of limestone. This apparently so that the King could see his way at night when, no doubt, visiting some of his aforementioned ladies.

The stairs gave way to several cantilevered steel walkways and a spiral staircase, parts of which were so rusted they looked as they could easily “give way”. Having taken about an hour so far, largely due to the numbers of visitors who had risen earlier than us the spiral led to the frescoes cave where we were ushered past in about 30 seconds.

The next phase was a sheltered walkway between the rock wall and a constructed wall known as the mirror wall due to its highly polished clay / plastered surface. There is evidence of much ancient writing, early grafitti, and it must be said that the Romans did visit Sri Lanka, their coins having been discovered during excavations.

Onwards and upwards via a series of rickety looking stairs, verging on ladders in places. A bit of an anti-climax at the top as the Selfies brigade were all around, spoiling the view for normal humans.
Who the hell started this fad??????????

Back to the hotel by noon and fell asleep. Sue has a headache so I'm taking the opportunity to write this drivel in anticipation of uploading this evening.

Tomorrow we head for Kandy, via an elephant orphanage and other such delights.

Caio!

G